Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Quorum, Meetings, Email

[Elizabeth Stevenson (tamgoddess]

This might be helpful to those of you on the meeting treadmill.

When we first moved in, we were also meeting incessantly. We had mortgage
problems, and were living in our units and renting from our builder. (This
was before any banks had heard of cohousing).

ALL the meetings were important, and some of them were critical. When we
finally had mortgages, we were thoroughly burned out. Yet we were still
meeting weekly for general meetings (not to mention committee meetings). We
decided that since we now owned our houses, most everything wasn't urgent
anymore, and we took a leap of faith. We decided to cut our meetings to
biweekly, and worry about the issues piling up later.

Lo and behold, it was enough meeting time to get the job done. Some issues
piled up, but eventually it settled down. We learned that meeting time gets
filled, no matter how much you have, so you might as well meet less. It was
a godsend.

Sharon, it sounds like there are still alot of things you folks need to work
on. But maybe you could agree to cut the meetings down on a timetable. Say,
at the end of summer, you will only meet biweekly for general meetings, and
later you could cut down committee meetings as well.

We found that we just need to bite the bullet and say we were going to meet
less, even though there was strong internal resistance to the idea. Our
fears were controlling us. We just had to let go.


--
Liz Stevenson
Southside Park Cohousing
Sacramento, California

tamgoddess [at] home.com
http://members.home.net/southsideparkcohousing

----------
>From: Sharon Villines <sharonvillines [at] prodigy.net>
>To: <cohousing-l [at] cohousing.org>
>Subject: Re: [C-L]_Quorum, Meetings, Email
>Date: Sat, Jun 2, 2001, 1:15 PM
>

> We also have class one and class two decisions. Class One is basically
> decisions affecting owners (legal and financial obligations) and the quorum
> is by household. Class Two decisions are those affecting community life and
> the quorum is based on members.
>
> As a new community we  are overwhelmed by meetings right now. My goal is
> _one_ meetingless week. Right now it is often 3-5 meetings a week. There is
> rarely (if ever) an evening when one team or another is not meeting.
>
> Right now we are having a major focus on "what?" We find ourselves on email
> or in a meeting all the time and not having fun yet. The emphasis on cutting
> down email has led to a reduction of fun email (jokes, sharing, comments)
> and an increase in business email (minutes, team reports, agendas, etc.)
>
> Meetings have become so much of a habit that attempts to make small group
> discussions casual by the introduction of pizza resulted in a request for a
> summary of the conversation for those who were not there. The small group
> discussion topic was -- communications.
>
> On the issue of attending meetings if you care about the issue -- I think
> this is fine for large group meetings -- the full membership business
> meetings where decisions are made. But if we used that measure (as some of
> our members have tried to do) for team meetings all of us would be in
> meetings (the same one) 24 hours a day. Teams have to deal with the wants,
> needs, wishes of those who are not there.
>
> But on the same note, whenever I find myself in a meeting without a quorum,
> I have to question if the meeting is really necessary or desirable. Has the
> question been explained to the membership sufficiently so they understand
> that it is important? Is it important? Will or can anything really happen at
> this meeting? Would I myself be happier not there than there? If not, why
> did I show up when others didn't? Do I need to get a life? Are the issues
> being considered really of group interest? Should the board be making the
> decision instead?
>
> I want more business to be discussed on email and more agreements on
> documents and proposals done on email so we can have more show and tell and
> just plain pointless conversation and gossip. I have nightmares about lists
> of topics with times beside them -- 10 minutes for users fees, 20 minutes
> for security codes, 5 minutes for report on leaking basements, 40 minutes
> for discussion of ....
>
> All our wonderful expertise and efficiency is beginning to feel like the rat
> race I just retired from -- the university. I'm even still working nights
> because that is when the "customers" who work days are available.
>
> I love every minute of it of course, but it is wearying and seemingly never
> ending. I've concluded that I just have to stop. Just get off the assembly
> line and use the parts to make sculpture instead of cars. But then of course
> the factory will go into bankruptcy or disuse and .........
>
> Sharon
> --
> Sharon Villines
> Takoma Village Cohousing, Washington DC
> http://www.takomavillage.org
>
>
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